Perplexity Chronicles: Act 1
by Alternate Hypothesis
Summary: Star Fox finds itself hired after the Aparoid Invasion as part of the military might of Corneria's largest and most ambitious project to discover life far outside of the Lylat System, and their trek into space may likely lead them to dangerous unknowns.
1. Prologue

Perplexity Chronicles

Act 1: Siblings of the Stars

Prologue

1:1:0

"From the vantage point of a terrestrial being space seems so inviting, so full of intrigue and life to be sought. But when one gets there he cannot but grasp that all he finds is a soul-crushing vacuum populated by specks of frozen dust and waves of killer radiation and distances which at all angles seem insurmountable between countless dead worlds which could not possibly yield life.

And yet, facing these tremendous realities, life finds the strength to continue to find hope that, despite the fruitless efforts, somewhere out in the vast killer emptiness there is another child of the universe searching for it siblings of the stars. To explore such a frontier is the most dangerous prospect for one who lives, and it is the bravest amongst us who dare to accept these challenges the universe brings."

These words have been beat into the heads of the brilliant minds of the Cornerian Academy of Interplanetary Biology. And these words spoken many years ago by the leader of the Academy at the time and winner of the Theslar Prize of Genius in Physics for producing the methods by which faster than light travel could be achieved economically ring true even more loudly than they did when they were said. Missions this extensive had never been attempted in Cornerian history, and all of those placed on Project Exodus were sure that with the amount of resources being shoveled into this credit-heavy mission that the discovery of a new form of life outside of the Lylat system would be the eventual product.

The search for life after the long peace following the infestation of the Aparoid menace was mainly being funded by the massive amounts of resources left over by the salvaged remains of the dead Aparoid army. (Who knew such a tragedy could be so profitable? Such is the way of Capitalism.) That and nobody really seemed in the mood for fighting after getting a taste of death dealt by mindless machines. So, as one could imagine, people who still had the fight left in them were greatly appreciated…and well paid. It was this reason primarily that the Cornerian Department of Intergalactic Defense, quickly organized after the Aparoid invasion, had sent several of their finest mercenary teams with the Exodus Fleet to assist should any...violent interactions occur.

The Exodus Fleet was a total of four primary ships. One for planetary analysis with the best planetary sensors credits could buy, the second was a terrarium experiment ship for if/ when some form of life was to be discovered proper experiments could be performed, the third was basically a flying cryptological linguists college with the best minds on theoretical language synthesis and the social sciences working full time on producing outgoing signals that could be interpreted by any intelligent race with half a working cortex, and the final one was a fully functioning Military Carrier. The other smaller vessels were a handful of engineering ships, frigates, and mobile Agriculture Stations.

Many of the young and old scientists were very excited to know that there were multiple combat celebrities amongst them. Although the mercenary teams tended to stick to the Carrier, often some of them would get bored enough of sitting around waiting for some not-so-likely fight that they wanted to meander about the other ships to see what was going on. Confusion riddled them whenever they did decide to do this, except for Slippy Toad who usually spent the long hours being lost on one of the many fabrication decks of the largest engineering craft doing whatever it is tech-heads do when they have more materials and precision-tools than they need, but desperately trying to understand what the tech-heads were saying seemed better than the overall boredom of their cabins or risking the structural integrity of their spacecraft in sparring flights out in the vacuum of space.

Fox McCloud could be found in the seat of his Arwing, docked in a dusty hangar. He couldn't spend any time pushing blood from his brain to his paws by practicing maneuvers outside because they were scheduled for a total twelve hours of safe-thrust in light speed, which happily no longer made him feel like he wanted to throw up. The first time they did an extended light-speed thrust it was by about hour six Fox had made a hysterical display of how delicate his stomach was. It was then the geeks had something to tease the muscle heads about.

The unhappy reality that misery loves company happened to put a silk lining on the day; Fay was, for the first time in months, bored of rewiring her pet Landmaster's control systems and was keeping him company, fluffing her droopy poodle ears with a silver comb and drinking some sort of energy-sludge out of a packet she had snuck out of the emergency food storage.

"Fay, that Shit's going to kill you; are you aware it was made in case the crew needs to be awake for extremely long periods of time?" Fox asked, worried like a father for the young tech-genius who had joined the crew not long after graduating from the Cornerian Military academy.

"Oh, you're not my dad, Foxie," she said, predictably.

"Don't call me 'Foxie', Fay." He said, annoyed.

She huffed, "But Krystal and Falco call you that all the time; why can't I?"

"It's different between those two. One is a jerk I can't boss around and the other is, well…different."

Fay must have had a thick skull, because the continued on despite the delicate hint to shut-it. "Besides, how am I supposed to keep myself from wasting so much time? You know the average person spends one third of their life asleep."

Fox looked at her sternly through the window of his craft, "so?"

"SO, with all that extra time I can get myself ahead by doing way more than other people in my position. I'm so privileged to have gotten this spot and replace Slippy when he and Amanda leave for whatever he plans to do I want to be able to compare," she began another torrent of information and plans, speaking gradually faster as she went on, sometimes slurring her words into sentences that could only be vaguely interpreted.

"Fay, as your captain I'd rather have my crew operating at one-hundred percent two-thirds of the time than fifty percent all the time. If you really want to compare I want to see quality work out of your time, because as I remember the last trial run I made with that tank you worked on the left-forward axel exploded mid test," Fox said, lifting his eyebrow in an annoyed fashion. He couldn't remember last time he had a conversation like this with someone.

Fay was taken aback, "that…that was a fluke. I misclibrated the plas-fuel network, it happens all of the time."

"Slippy himself said it was a ridiculous mistake, one that could kill one of us in combat. He told me you seemed awful dark around the eyes that day. Please get some proper sleep before I have to order you to." Fox leaned back and closed his eyes.

"Yes, sir…" she said, grumbling a little under her breath.

It was quiet for a little while until the tension let up and Fay sat back up, turning the Comm-Unit back on. "Hey, Fox, do you think this whole thing is a waste of time?"

Fox chuckled. "Not really, we should feel lucky to have a gig right now that pays so well for practically no work at all."

"No," she continued, "I mean, this whole Exodus project thing." She pocketed her comb and tossed the drink-packet to the side. "The last Extra Lylatian beings we encountered were the Aparoids, and look at how that turned out. What makes anyone think another entity is going to be any nicer?"

Now, that was a serious thought from her, Fox considered. "I suppose there's risk in anything so unknown. But after that whole Aparoid thing people are looking for any other light in the darkness to call an ally. You know, like space-siblings or some other nonsense like that."

"So, what do you hope for then? You had us take this job for a reason I gather." Fay began reading some code from the Arwing's computer.

Fox breathed deep. "I guess I'm hoping there's some true goodness outside our little system. The Venomians are a waste of carbon and we already had that discussion about the Aparoids, so maybe there's another creature like us who's seeking out the unknown and DOESN'T what to KILL it. I'm certainly not looking forward to getting in a fight with an unknown enemy, that's for damned sure. They could have weapons that open black holes, split space-time, or turn our fucking ships into cheese for all we know."

Krystal's voice came over the Comm. "I think we'll find someone truly as unique as us, I have a good feeling about all this." The both of them saw Krystal had snuck into her Arwing while they were in conversation.

"Well, we both know not to disregard your hunches, Krystal," Fox said, giving her a wink through the glass. "When did you get here, anyway?"

Fay started in again. "You mean you're going to give every little hunch she has serious consideration; what's with that bias? I have hunches too, you know!"

He leaned back and popped his knuckles. "When you've worked with Krystal as long as we have you learn to trust those little hunches, her instincts have their place in our line of work."

Krystal chuckled and leaned toward Fox's Arwing. "Is it bad that we feel more comfortable talking to each other like this than in person?"

"I think it just means you're working too hard all the time, you guys need a break." Fay said, oblivious to what was going on between to two Vulpines.

He could see the inquiry in her eyes and Fay probably hadn't caught the hint. "Well, at least you've made that progress. Perhaps we can try it in private now. How 'bout some practice, eh Foxie?"

Fox began stuttering and running his palm across his throat. "Not with the kid around!" he said moderately-quiet through his teeth.

"See, she can call you Foxie!" Fay returned.

"It's different; leave it at that, kid." Fox said, distressed at the attention into his personal life.

"I'm not a kid!" Fay raised her voice, "I just turned 19, and I'm a legal adult! And why are you so sensitive about your shyness? It's okay to admit it, Fox Sir."

Krystal was perfectly entertained, giggling and winking back at him. "I guess you could say it's something like that. Anyway, I came down to say that the Lieutenant Captain is calling a meeting on the main flight bridge in exactly two hours starting…now, so you should try and make yourself look nice, Fay."

As it would suppose, Fay was waiting for an opportunity to not be bored so she rocketed out of the cockpit of the Arwing she was sitting in and took off towards the Cabin Deck. Krystal could sense the psychic 'thank you' a mile away from Fox.

Krystal looked at Fox after a short silence and they both got out and on their feet. She approached him, staring into his eyes. "You know," he began, holding her arms tenderly, "there are some days I wish I could see what you're thinking."

Krystal put her forehead to his. "There's nothing going on up here that you don't already know, love." She held him close to her, knowing no one but the cameras were watching. "When this is all said and done?" She asked as though it had been asked many times before.

Fox pecked a kiss to her forehead and hugged her tightly. "I promise."

There was some noise coming down another hallway which sounded like footsteps and it startled the both of them. "Hey, lovebirds!" a familiar tough-guy voice rang from outside the hangar.

"What is it Falco?" Fox asked, reluctantly parting hands with Krystal.

He stepped in, looking as though he had just rolled out of his cabin bed, in a terrible looking standard issue uniform the Project offered, compliments of the Cornerian Defense Force. Fox's best guess was that Falco didn't want to wear out his nice looking red digs by wearing them when nothing was going on. "Meeting's been moved forward. Apparently the communication ship thinks it's found something interesting, which is good news to me since it's been real boring this past month standing around spinning our wheels. So if you're done shacking up you'd better hustle."


	2. 1:1 Ponderous

Perplexity Chronicles

Act 1: Siblings of the Stars

1:1

There was no time to get to the cabins and change. Everyone who had just discovered there was a sudden call to all meeting rooms was being reminded on the overhead speakers and announcements on their Infometers, which flickered updates like strobe lights along their tiny screens and practically lit the energy-saving dark hallways from their wrists as people ran by, and more than likely half the crew aboard the Military Carrier would be either without a shirt or in their sleep-wear.

Krystal, with her lithe frame and great running legs, was able to dash herself there ahead of the rest of her squadron. The meeting auditorium, unlike its usual state of gathering dust and memories, had all seats occupied by those who were probably on that floor when the notice was called. Unlike some, however, she was able to walk in without too much notice since she was still dressed in her professional blue and black flight uniform. However, the most unsettling thing was the lack of sound. Everyone was listening their best to hear what the lead-captain was relaying to the crew via loudspeakers. A lot of the specifics she didn't fully understand, mostly things like chemical parts per million and universal mathematical patterning, she let most of it fly above her head as she was trying to listen for parts of the announcements saying they found something that needs to be investigated with eyes and ears.

Her green eyes scanned the auditorium for a free seat. Just in time, however, an engineer got a page on his Earcom and rushed out of the room. She leapt into the chair and listened as best she could, trying to understand what exactly the next course of action would be. It hadn't been a full year yet. Hell, it hadn't even been two months and now they were suspecting having found indications of advanced life forms. She was very excited something was happening so soon. Even though her hunches had told her something would happen, she had worries that the whole Exodus project would be a waste and such a good idea would be scrapped.

Fox entered the room just after Krystal, but didn't take the time scavenging for a seat nearest to the console. He instead leaned against the back wall and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the background noise being made by a gaggle of young feline Academy recruits nearby. His hearing was very good, better than average (the audiologists told him), but his understanding of scientific jargon wasn't much better than Krystal's. He too was waiting for the command to fly; the command to see things with his own eyes.

Falco was sitting in one of the front seats, though, judging by his demeanor and cross-legged disinterest meant he didn't understand a single thing that was being announced to the crew. Even more so than Fox, he was waiting for someone to tell him to get his ass into a plane and get some feet on ground. Someone nudged him as he rolled his eyes and dozed off a little. A fly boy like Falco was sort of like an easily bored child with one all-encompassing hobby. You take him away from that hobby and he'll moan until he's back at his obsession.

Last to wander in, dressed well and obviously unhappy at the reroute and having missed a great deal of the announcements that actually mattered to her, was Fay, swaying her floppy white ears back and forth with her head as she desperately tried to locate an empty seat. She gave up hope, though, and when she saw Krystal seated on the edge of the Isle she tiredly plopped herself down on the floor to Krystal's right side. "What did they say? What are they thinking happened?" She whispered to Krystal, hoping not to interrupt the Black Lab in the military uniform occasionally asking questions to the communications experts.

Krystal leaned to her right, trying to be as quiet as possible. "They said something about a wave pattern making static that looks like it was intelligently made." She glanced down, looked up, and then quickly eyed her. "You didn't need to dress for the Consulate, Fay. Is that what took you so long?"

Fey huffed quietly and her voice rose a little. "Well, if Fox hadn't 'recommended' I get rested I wouldn't have been in the shower when I got the alarm call." She listened closely after that, following a few poignant hushes from the crowd. She began to whisper again. "You think they'll send us out on this one? I'd be really upset if we didn't at least get to see something before they quarantined it. Whad're your hunches telling you, sis?"

Krystal's face contorted a little and when the auditorium was dismissed for discussion from the announcement she leaned back and closed her eyes. "I just don't know. They said there are patterns, but we're in the middle of nowhere. I'm not and expert with my space coordinates but I'm fairly certain 10,000 miles off the left of fleet formation is pretty close to us. And we're two hundred thousand light-years from the nearest documented system. That and the entire sensor cruiser can't see a bloody thing in that area."

Fey nodded. "That's a pretty pessimistic hunch. Well, maybe it is an undocumented system that we missed. It could be near a brown dwarf gas giant, or a hypersmall star. It's hard to document planets if you can' see their star."

Krystal pried herself from the seat and started walking out of the auditorium while swaying her hips to get a particular captain's attention, although she gathered a lot more than just his attention judging by the ever familiar cat-call she heard on the way out. Fox followed her as if summoned by the almighty to a mission. The rest of the squadron basically understood that Fox had a leash, and one that got tugged on an almost hourly basis. The fact that he hadn't retired and asked her to share his name yet was surprising to them most.

Hours were tense on the carrier and thus seeming more like entire days' worth of work while waiting for the official declaration from upstairs on what action was going to be taken. Fey was chattering on like a chipmunk about how excited she was that something was finally happening, even if it was practically nothing at all. Fox stayed in combat uniform at all times, just in case of any last minute demands of his team. Falco, as usual, was nowhere to be seen (not too unlikely, though, he was at the staff canteena about 3 minutes run away). Slippy was back on deck and rapidly devolved into scolding Fey for the wiring jobs that were somewhat sloppy and then started showing her how to fix them himself.

Krystal was in the cockpit of her Arwing, passing the long off hours away, pressing the tips of her fingers into her cranium. She spent most of her time there, where it was silent and she could think properly. She would do her essential prep duties but mostly she just slept, gathering energy for the storm. It was interesting, she also thought, how second nature it was for her to do all these things she had only recently been trained for. She tried so hard for Fox after he had saved her on Sauria, did everything to be with him. After all, how much is too much when repaying someone who saved your life? The instructors at the academy told her she was a prodigy; that if she hadn't been born to a religious puritan colony within a system outside of Solar with strange archaic technology and education she could very well have been the best graduate they had ever seen. But all that praise seemed not to do her any good. It all seemed to serve as a small challenge; a welcome distraction to the fact that all but her closest friends were aliens to her and that no matter how hard she tried to force herself to change, there wasn't a place she laid her head that felt like home. There were times she was pained by the fact that she had no soul in her work; as if she would have rather gone on foot missions scouting out caves on unknown moons rather than manning computer terminals or piloting hypersonic aircraft. But those were thoughts she crushed and swept away quickly. They weren't very productive.

She had felt giddy about this project but now she felt like something wasn't right with the whole thing, like something was going to go horribly wrong but there was nothing anyone could do to stop it from happening. She shared this with Fox, who listened but told her what she feared; that they had to follow orders. Something about that spot, she could feel it stronger than ever before. Ten thousand miles away and she could feel it; even stronger than how she felt before the Aparoid attack. Though, she had to dismiss it a bit because she started having odd strong feelings of warning before breakfasts that Fox would burn himself or days of work members of the team would fall down a support shaft and brutally injure themselves. And not long after a few hours of deep thought her mind went black with sleep.

"Wake up everyone we've got launch-operations in 10 minutes, report in!" Fox's voice sprang from her Infometer. She rubbed her tired eyes, twisted her knotted back from sleeping in the ship, and responded after brushing a patch of disheveled hair from her eyes.

She suppressed a yawn. "Krystal reporting in, ready for preflight warm-up," she said, holding the device's com-button on her wrist up to her face.

She heard Fox chuckle from her wrist. "I guess it's easy to get to the hangar that quickly when you sleep there. Maybe I should get Falco to do that. Anyway, if you can remotely activate the Arwings' engines for preflight we'll be in good shape to make first to the landing site."

She yawned again. "10-4. Proceeding with preflight engine prep."

Krystal stretched some more and then flipped a few switches to give power to the cockpit. The ship's consoles lit up into a forest of vibrant heads-up-displays and it took her only a minute to find the semi-hidden one that she needed to remotely access the other Arwings' function's. Normally a pilot wouldn't have that access to that kind of programing according to regulations, but she knew that Fox trusted his team with at least that responsibility. They were a small team and they couldn't afford the drop in efficiency that came from following every single Cornerian combat directive. It took her almost two minutes but when she heard the hissing sound of flash-heat being ejected from the Zero-Point Chamber on the other four ships she closed the console and began fastening herself in before she did the same with her vessel.

Her restraints pulled tightly on her chest as the three other team members who were going on that flight; Falco, Fox, Krystal, and Fay. Slippy hadn't renewed his pilot's license since his hiatus, so the best filler was the rookie. Krystal had known Fox felt that Fay's high speed maneuvers were something to be desired; but few recruits came through Starfox thanks to the Captain's own pickiness so he didn't have much of a choice.

The hangar of the carrier was far different than the one on the old Great Fox. Its doors were wide enough to allow five fighters to leave blindfolded at full speed and never hit one another and the runway had plenty of flight room to get into formation before even leaving the ship. And when they received the orders to assume flight and thrust forward into formation she was very glad this was so, for not long after initiating her boosters imagery outside of the cockpit flew past in a hazy motion-blur. There was no living way possible you could navigate that closely at launch speeds without computer assistance. The team quickly jetted kilometers away from the carrier vessel, moving at full thrust towards the anomaly in the hopes to see it first.

Fox finally turned on his comm after curtly nodding to himself that the timely takeoff without so much as a bark of orders was definitely an improvement. "Okay, so, basic unknown phenomenon procedure; all core power from boost jets and energy based weaponry is to be diverted to your shield arcs to bring them up to maximum power tolerances. Should there be any nasty surprises it is unlikely we'll suffer any casualties."

"Not to mention it is a clear sign of peaceful intent," Krystal pointed out while her ship was the first to slow to a creep and begin to develop a strongly glowing blue oblique spheroid shell around her ship. "Any sufficiently advanced race should be able to sense our weapons are disabled and if they aren't so advanced, advancing slowly towards the front line is usually not a sign of hostile action…"

Falco chuckled over the comm, "Yeah, assuming they're Lylatian. Who knows what kind of weird ways of thinking other systems have boiled up? We could be insulting their mothers for all we know."

The other ships began to shield up as well, forming a wide glowing lineup.

Fey's eyes glossed over the panels on her extremely intricate customized heads up display. Her head tilted sideways in confusion and the others could hear her clacking away on a separate keyboard over the comm. One of her sensors was reading a strange kind of wave that shouldn't be there.

"Anything you'd like to broadcast, pup?" Fox asked, keeping a close eye on his temperature gauges. "Not that I don't love the chorus of Keys and Frustrated Moans in d-minor."

She finished and sent a 3d representation of her findings to his Arwing's display. "It looks like a pulsar, which is really interesting because…well…those kind of things should only be made by super-novas, and other sufficiently large and catastrophic events. The fact that it is here, seemingly being formed out of nowhere, in such controlled and nondestructive amounts is astonishing."

Fox nodded, raising an eyebrow. "Think we can get a little closer?"

Fey gave a thumbs-up on her screen. "As far as I know, the gravity and energy shouldn't be lethal to biomass and zero-point drives at these levels. I'll keep a close eye on the intensity, though, just in case we're getting too close."

"Alright, approach at a slow forward advance; keep visual recording devices on at all times looking for interesting phenomenon. You never know what might be useful for those scientists back at the frigate."

A resounding, "Yes Sir!" erupted from the comms.

Minutes later something came into visual range. It was a small sphere of darkness, with a ring of warped light around its circumference. From its center came the pulsating rhythm which by now was rattling the engines of the ships. The four of them looked at this visual insult to the laws of physics with awed looks.

"Fey, I'm no expert in astrology but…is that a Black Hole?" Fox asked, about ready to give the order to about-face and run like little sissies in case this monster in waiting decided to grow or move towards them or something.

Fey nodded and started rubbing her temples. "Yes, the mass sensors show that it has a sphere of influence very similar to a singularity but it isn't behaving like one. It's too small to have possibly formed naturally and stay stable and… it looks like…it's gro—We need to go!"

"Who's giving orders?" Falco asked tauntingly.

Fox looked at her readout from his console and his eyes bugged out of his skull in terror. "Fine! I say we need to go NOW! About face, restore thrusters to maximum burn and apply all power to main engines! We need to escape this thing!"

Their ships swung into a collective Immelman maneuver, and without a moment's notice the lot of them felt the tug on their bodies as the sudden application of a gravitational field began to pancake them into the backs of their pilot-chairs. Falco swore obsceneties Fox had never heard before, Fey was babbling on about how she didn't want to die torn apart atom by atom in a black hole, and Krystal's eyes lit up with the ferocity to survive. Soon after two tortuous minutes of slowly coming out of the thing's pull it jumped in size and the bodies of everyone began feeling the weight of two full grown dinosaurs placed upon them. Krystal's hands threatened to slip from the throttle which she was using every ounce of her adrenaline fuelled vigor to keep forward as Fey began to shout over the communications array.

"We're losing altitude in relation to the singularity. I can't believe this! WHY!?" She shouted.

Fox was the furthest ahead, using the strength of his well-muscled body to fight something he'd trained to deal with for years. But he'd never felt such high G-Forces, and soon his body was about to remind him of that. His vision began to sparkle and fade, eventually everything went black and all he was left with was an insane compulsion to push the throttle forward. It was all that his blood-deprived brain could handle.

Suddenly a wave of whiplash struck their Arwings, damage alarms blared like broken smoke alarms, and a few of them could notice a distinct hiss coming from somewhere in the cockpits. Their planes scattered away in all directions from the blast, spinning out of control. Everyone else was passed out from the strain of the controls even the G-Diffusion system couldn't handle such forces and it was clear that all the alignment panels were completely ruined. Heck, without those beautiful marvels of aerospace engineering they would have been long gone; particles in a theoretical point of space. All but Krystal, whose last moments of consciousness looked up from her visor to see a massive hulking structure, with red, white, and black designs painted on the side, peeling gracefully trough space from where the anomaly was. It could easily have been thirteen kilometers long, of dancing lights and solid metal.

She realized then that if there was one thing that never lied, it was her instincts.


	3. 1:2 Breathing the Black

Perplexity Chronicles

Act 1: Siblings of the Stars

1:2

"Hello! HELLO! Anyone please respond. Our atmospheric seals have been breached!" Krystal could barely hear the muffled sounds of panic from a fuzzy sounding and probably broken emergency communications radio just past the blaring alarms and crackles of electricity. "Please, someone wake up! We're in an unstable orbit with a Class-C-8 planetary moon and I'm detecting faint signals of small objects moving toward us," Fay shouted, piercing her ears.

Krystal's head wanted to explode and her eyes stung with the reentry of blood to their veins. Her extremities prickled from the lack of blood being restored and her back felt like one big bruise. Above everything else, though, she was having difficult time breathing. Light headed and startled she reached around the disturbingly warped cockpit, which seemed as though a giant hand had twisted it like a roll of toffee, and grabbed onto the emergency radio-wave communicator. "Planet? Fay, this is Krystal. Ugh, where are we?"

Fay's signal gave out slightly and then returned. Her voice approached a more relieved tone and she continued, "We're above a storm planet. From what I can see it has heavy vegetation and a breathable atmosphere. Whatever that thing is that carried us here took us a very long distance. At our current relative velocity we're on a reentry trajectory which would be fine if our other two pilots were conscious. I can control Falco's shield systems, which seem to have power lines still intact to protect him from the shock heating of an emergency reentry, but Fox's ship was completely totaled."

Krystal began getting very confused at all the new information being thrown at her. "How totaled? Is…Can we save him, do you think, can you get his lifesigns? What did you say about objects moving toward us?" She was starting to come to and began taking in her new environment, including the lightning-lit bluish atmosphere of the planet below them.

The radio fuzzed a little and whistled as it reconnected to Fay's. "Fox had his engines turned to mechanically unsafe thrust levels. Most likely he could have suffered some sort of internal hemorrhaging from the intense G-forces he experienced. He was going at about 46% more thrust than even you and he took far more biological stress. His life signs show his heart is still beating and he is breathing, but it is shallow. He never puts on his neuroband so I can't say anything about his nervous system. As far as I can tell from what I can remotely access the only thing left of his ship is a cockpit with a leaking pressure seal and a few power lines.

"As far as those objects I'm detecting, their trajectories show them coming from that hulking monolith above us. I don't know what they are or what they are capable of but considering the amount of hardened plating on their mother-craft it's safe to assume they aren't here to say hello. I say we make an emergency hot-drop into the atmosphere, maybe we can hide planetside."

Krystal tried to mentally bind with Fox in a vain attempt to get his thought patterns. Within seconds her mind was beginning to feel the surge of thought traffic. And suddenly, as she began to gain full consciousness, she threw her head forward in pain at a menagerie of thoughts flowing into her mind she received the consistent battery of the thought UNKNOWN and SUPRISE.

"Well," Krystal began while pounding open a hatch beneath the panels of her controls, trying to get at her space suit, "I'm absolutely certain they know we are here and they're very startled. Do you think you can extend my Arwing's shield out and around Fox's cockpit?" She asked, smacking the hatch one final time before it opened with a metallic crack.

"Not sure if I can do it for very long. What, are you seriously going to try and get him out of there under EVA?" Fay asked.

Krystal struggled in the tight space of the mangled cockpit to put on the jet black EVA suit with protective bright orange plates over vital areas, minding the sharp jagged protrusions of plating now pointing every-which-way. "How long can you keep a bubble of atmospheric pressure around us while I suit him up? I have to try something, we can't abandon him!"

Fay struggled with her demand. "I…Using your systems I can keep an extended shield up for maybe two minutes. If I get close enough I might be able to share my shields and Falco's to add up and get you maybe five. My Zero Point Chamber isn't damaged too much. I can't remotely access your flight controls, do they still work?"

Krystal observed the front panel and took in the devastation after snapping her glistening and egg shaped EVA helmet over her head and to the suit. Metal was twisted, plastic melted, and it was clear that the electronics were smoking from the inside. She reached for the flight stick on her right side arm-rest and the throttle on her left. She pushed forward on the stick and a groaning sound from the Arwing was accompanied by the craft pitching downward and bringing her comrades' ships, as well as the alien vessel, into view.

The vessel's magnificence of purpose made it beautiful. Each and every curve and corner suggested it was built for war and if the species understood economics the same way Corneria did they must have spared no expense in its construction. Its shape was as if one had taken an egg and stretched it long-ways out, and if her eyes were as sharp as she remembered, around thirteen or fifteen kilometers long (over eight miles for you non-metric folk). Across its entire surface were bold red, black and white hexagonal designs in patterns which must have been some sort of intricate geometric alphabet. Concerning the Arwings; Falco's ship was in a slow spiral in relation to them, but relatively unscathed in comparison to Fox's, which had been twisted and bent so badly that certain small pieces were hanging on to the cockpit by wires alone. Even so, two of his thrusters had been completely stripped off and it was easy to see that if Fox was left there too much longer he'd suffocate no matter what nearly-dead-state he was in. Fay's was in nearly perfect condition, except for the painfully obvious cracks in the Arwing's blast-window. And Krystal's still had a little bit of functionality but it was becoming clear that two Arwings were going to have to carry four to the surface.

Krystal made sure that the things which were absolutely necessary, such as medical kits, food, water, and her blaster, were held down to her legs and arms somehow by the few Velcro straps that had been dislodged and started pressing buttons on her emergency console as soon as she got her own vessel stabilized. She finally opened communications on her EVA's radio. "Alright, I'm leaving my ship now, Fey. When I get to Fox's Ship, remotely pop his cockpit open just as soon as you have the containment field around it, that way I have time to get in there with him and help him into his own space suit." She said, taking a deep breath for focus.

"Be careful, Sis! You don't have any security lines. And if you miss going too fast your EVA suit's propellant pack won't be able to get you back!" Fey was panicking, feeling strained under the sudden pressure of near-death weighing down and relying upon her skillset alone.

Krystal, who fiddled with the palm controls on her EVA suit for her Propellant Pack, pulled down on the release handle, extended it out, twisted it, and pressed it back in. As soon as she did the window flipped open with a powerful blast. She had to use all her strength gripping the handrails along the sides to not be pulled into space with the force of the air leaving the cockpit. All sound stopped and she was left with the soft sounds of her own breaths and heartbeats. She readied herself, took aim, and pushed herself off with a graceful headword dive towards Fox. And as she moved, her perception flipped drastically. Suddenly she felt upside down as though she was falling down on top of his Arwing. Minutes passed and there was only silence. Thankfully Fey must have thought to give Krystal her thinking peace. And after the gap had been bridged, she discovered she had only missed his vessel by about two meters or so.

Krystal flipped herself back around with her propellant pack and tried to slow herself down very quickly. She had about 2 hours of Usable oxygen in her suit but Fox had at maximum 15 minutes before he was bound to start asphyxiating. She pressed her thumb against her palm to get maximum thrust from her pack and soon she was floating three meters away. Close guess. Okay Fey," Krystal began, "let me take a look inside before we start anything. Get a better idea of what I'm going to have to do."

She peered inside past the frosted blast-glass. Fox was there, unconscious and it looked like he had some sort of injury to his head that could only have been caused by a large and jagged spike of metal jutting out from the left of Fox's face that was covered in blood. In response, Fox must have attempted to bandage his skull with a piece of his shirt It worked, because he wasn't bleeding anymore, but judging on the pool of freezing blood around him and quickly diminishing air supply he didn't have the energy to keep going. Aside from the obvious sharp objects jutting about all over the place, there were lots of other bits of metal floating around in his cockpit and it took her a minute of swinging around outside to find the hatch where his EVA would be.

Krystal nodded and breathed in again. "Okay Fey, give me the go ahead when you've got the shield up and when you've popped the hatch I'll get him suited up out in space. It doesn't look like I'm going to be able to just get in there with him, there's too much debris and carnage." Not much went over the radio for the next while, though Krystal could see that the moon they were in orbit around was getting closer by the minute and she could spot little glimmers of something metallic coming from the Alien ship that were obviously gaining on them.

"Okay, sis, Ready? Three, two, one…" and when Fey finished counting down, Falco's, Fey's, and Krystal's ships lit up, bright blue beams extended from each of them, and created a bubble of energy around Fox's Arwing. "You've got four minutes and twenty eight seconds, and counting; go!"

The pressure created by the air bubble was significant when it encountered the atmosphere expelling from his cockpit. Fox came out with it, having not had himself strapped down before falling unconscious, and Krystal had to catch him with the ends of her fingers around his boot to keep him from flying into the energy wall behind them. Once the bubble started to fill with atmosphere from the recyclers, pressure was build and Krystal had already navigated the wrecked internals of his plane and retrieved the Space-Suit. She opened the suit and started madly stuffing his legs, body, and arms into it.

"C'mon, Fox! Don't you dare die on me," she growled at him as he started to freeze and jitter from the temperature, pressure sickness, and particles of high radiation hitting him that were not not stopped by the shield. "You've survived worse than this." Then, almost as soon as she clicked his helmet on, the shields failed and the air within the bubble burst out in on single powerful wave of air in all directions disappearing into the void of space. Krystal held on to Fox and they both were blown away from Fox's craft and in the direction of Fey's.

Krystal guided Fox over to Fey's Ship, using some of Fox's removable propellant Tank to supplement her supply, and she could see Fey crying inside her cockpit. "Quit that, Fey, we're safe. Now, as soon as the remaining craft can recharge their batteries do you think you can pilot your Arwing through reentry and to the surface using the additional air from Fox's Oxygen tank?"

She wiped the tears from her eyes with one of her floppy poodle ears and nodded. "Yeah, easy; might be without air for part of the trip but it's nothing that'll kill us."

Krystal nodded from outside and started tugging Fox toward the back of Fey's Arwing. "Open up your cargo hatch, if there isn't anything there I can strap Fox down so he doesn't move and flying won't be impaired at all."

"Good idea, sis," she responded, "Might be a good idea to do that with Falco's ship. I doubt he's going to be waking up soon, judging on his lifesigns. And his has a much better chance of a soft landing."

Krystal finished fastening all the black over Fox's body, tightening one last one over his legs, and blew him a kiss before leaving a small crack in his helmet and yelling at Fey to seal her cargo hold. And as Krystal pushed off Fey's front window she started to feel a little better. Maybe it was a futile hope, but some hope was better than nothing.

"I'm getting much slower degradation of atmosphere in my vessel, Krystal. But I don't think we have the energy recovery time to do for Falco what we did for Fox. You might have to-"

Krystal interrupted her, "Sit on his lap and fly us down that way, I know. Just don't mention anything when we touch down if he isn't awake by then.

Some buzzing and crackling cam over their radio frequencies and Falco's groans and coughs could be heard. "No need, babe, though you're welcome to my cockpit anytime. No need to catch me asleep."

Krystal rolled her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief for him waking up finally. Falco was much better at emergency landings than her anyway. "No thanks, Feathers. I'll hitch a ride in your rear if that's okay."

"I'd make the obvious joke in response, but seriously, here the hells are we? Last I checked we were within spotting distance of the Exodus Fleet, not falling like rocks toward an alien planet next to a-" Falco paused and looked up when his spinning vessel caught sight of the alien ship. "Holy crap covered ailerons, is that as big as my computers' telling me it is?"

Krystal had to take great care approaching Falco's ship, hoping not to get smacked out of the way by a wing-tip. "That's what we both figure. Now, if you please Mr. Ace Pilot, could you stabilize your ship so I can nestle myself into the cargo?"

"Now now, Vixen, what's got you all in a-," as he effortlessly controlled his craft he saw Fox and Krystal's planes. "Um, nevermind that. Where's Fox, and why're your birds breathing-the-black?" Falco asked, surprised and worried sounding.

Krystal used the last of her propellant to get into a good climbing position and began strapping herself to the furthest forward wall from the aft of the plane. The straps were supposed to be for firearms and other implements, but in an emergency someone could use them as a set of E-Landing seatbelts to keep them from getting whiplash. "Fox is hurt, bad, we need to get him planetside so we can treat him. Our birds are scrap, the aliens can have them. Maybe they'll figure out we're friendly and leave us alone or something." Finally, with her free arm she was using for strapping, she grabbed onto a guardrail and when the cargo sealed shut, she turned her helmet with one arm, threw it off, and set the oxygen output on her suit to maximum.

The smell of burnt hair and meat that always accompanied spacewalks from the radiation charring the suit was the least of it. Krystal was feeling motion sick, stressed, and most of all worried about Fox. She lied to him; he'd never survived anything as bad as she'd seen him in then. He was bleeding from the head, freezing to death, possibly internally bleeding, and likely had some degree of radiation poisoning from the exposure to nearly unfiltered starlight. She leaned her head forward and couldn't help herself, after all she had done she was exhausted and she had never felt anxiety like this before, she vomited on the floor of the cargo and her entire diagram shook from her body wanting to weep. But she couldn't let herself do that; they still had much more to do before there was time to crumble.


End file.
